Atrial fibrillation is a common cardiac arrhythmia. Patient's suffering from atrial fibrillation experience malfunctions of their heart's electrical system that cause the atria to quiver rapidly instead of beating in a normal pattern. This quivering prevents the heart from properly pumping blood and can eventually lead to clot formation and stroke.
Treatments for atrial fibrillation include drug therapy, electrocardioversion, and surgical or intravascular ablation techniques. Surgical and catheter based techniques have grown in popularity because drug therapy may be ineffective in some patients, showing success rates as low as fifty percent. Along with this low success rate, drug therapies also have deleterious side effects.
Surgical ablation requires a more invasive procedure whereby the surgeon creates a maze-like pattern of incisions on the inside of the patient's atria. The scarring that results acts to block the abnormal electrical pathways in the heart that lead to atrial fibrillation. Surgical ablation has a much higher success rate than drug therapies and lacks the potential for side effects presented by drug treatment. However, highly invasive (e.g., open-chest) procedures can present substantial risks.
Catheter ablation techniques use a less invasive approach and create scar tissue via a transvenous approach. A catheter delivers energy or cools tissue to cause lesional scarring without cracking a patient's chest.
While current treatments address atrial fibrillation, further advances in ablation devices and their methods of use would be beneficial.